Russia Bombards Ukraine for Nearly 10 Hours in a Deadly Assault

The attack came as U.S. officials were expected to hold peace talks with Ukrainian and Russian officials in the coming days.

Russia unleashed a nearly 10-hour air assault across Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least two people in the capital and injuring dozens more, according to the Ukrainian authorities.

The attack, which involved dozens of Russian missiles and hundreds of drones, came as Trump administration officials were expected to meet with Ukrainian and Russian officials in the coming days as part of a diplomatic push to end the war.

The Russian assault started just before midnight, with the capital, Kyiv, coming under the heaviest fire. The all-clear was given around 9:30 a.m. Under a thick white fog, emergency workers scrambled to respond to fires and tend to the wounded in seven districts of Kyiv.

The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said two people had been killed and at least 37 injured. A third person was killed outside the city.

Many people in Kyiv were awakened by air-raid warnings that dragged on for hours. Margarita, 29, was in bed in the eastern part of the city when an explosion hit.

She described seeing a flash of light, things falling on her and blood pouring out. She spoke to a reporter in front of her damaged apartment building, her head wrapped in a bandage that covered four stitches. She asked that her last name not be used, without giving a reason. Some Ukrainians are reluctant to give their full names out of fears for their safety or that of their loved ones still near the front line.

The blast blew out her windows and peppered the walls of her ninth-floor corner apartment with shrapnel, she said. She had moved to Kyiv from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine to escape fierce fighting there. The sad irony of the Kyiv attack was not lost on her.

“In the Donetsk region,” she said, “I never got hit like this.”

As a crane hoisted rescuers to the higher floors of her building, some residents were already inside sweeping glass from their charred apartments. Others lined up in the street for hot tea and plastic sheeting from aid groups to cover their windows.

Many were unsure if a drone or a missile had hit. Sheared-off trees and a crater in a small patch of greenery were visible in front of the building, along with the shell of a car on the road beyond it.

Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, noted that the assault came as the Trump administration was trying to maintain momentum in the peace talks.

“While everyone is discussing points of peace plans, Russia continues to pursue its ‘war plan’ of two points: to kill and destroy,” Mr. Sybiha wrote on X.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Russia had targeted energy infrastructure and “civilian facilities” in the sweeping attack, which involved 36 missiles and nearly 600 drones. More than 600,000 consumers were without power in Kyiv and the surrounding region on Saturday morning, according to the country’s energy ministry.

When Mr. Zelensky later announced that a Ukrainian delegation was en route to the United States “to swiftly and substantively work out the steps needed to end the war,” rescue efforts at the 9-story apartment building in Kyiv were winding down.

Soot-covered firefighters perched on their truck. Residents carrying sheets of plywood climbed stairwells still draped with fire hoses.

Iryna, 42, who did not give her last name, said she was unsure if she and her husband would be able to stay that night in their apartment, where broken glass covered every surface and the smell of smoke was overpowering..

They had gone to a basement shelter just 10 minutes before the blast, she said.

Even there, she said it was very loud and hard to breathe with all the smoke and dust.

But the couple knew they were lucky. The shelter, they noted, was only set up a few weeks ago. Without it, the toll could have been far worse.

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